Why do organisms always grow more and more like crabs? This phenomenon is called "crabization"

Crabs look majestic and taste delicious. They can be used for viewing as well as being cooked into delicacies.

There are many types of crabs, such as the common hairy crabs, swimming crabs, expensive king crabs, coconut crabs, plus hairy stone crabs, porcelain crabs, frog crabs, hermit crabs, and so on. It is worth noting that many of the names I just mentioned are not actually crabs, and the reason why they all have the word "crab" in their names is because they look very similar to crabs. For example, king crabs belong to the family of stone crabs, a crustacean, and are not crabs, while hermit crabs belong to the family of hermit crabs. In terms of kinship, hermit crabs are actually more closely related to shrimps, so they are not crabs either. As for coconut crabs, they can be regarded as a special hermit crab, and biologically belong to the family of land hermit crabs, so obviously they are not crabs either.

We just took king crabs, hermit crabs and coconut crabs as examples. In nature, there are many animals with the word "crab" in their names and those without the word "crab" in their names that are extremely similar to crabs in appearance.

This is actually a very interesting thing. These animals belong to different species and live in very different environments. Why do they all evolve into crabs in the end? This phenomenon is called "crabization" in biology. Of course, not all animals have the tendency to crabify. Although there are many kinds of animals with crabification, they basically have a common name, that is, "bugs". Some of these bugs live in the ocean, some live in rivers, and some are completely "landlubbers", or "landlubbers".

Why do insects want to turn themselves into crabs?

Let's think about this problem in an easy-to-understand way. Assume that the world we live in is a game, and each creature is a character in this game. A game character has two basic attributes, attack and defense. Let's think about it, which attribute is the most important? In most games, players prefer attacking to defense, but it's different in our game, because each character in this game has only one life, so defense is the most important, and each creature will try to increase its defense attribute. Of course, for some relatively advanced life forms, they don't rely much on defense attributes, because they can ensure their survival through speed, dodge and hide, but insects can't do that.

The bugs are restricted by their physical conditions and can only focus on their defense attributes. So how do they do that?

The process of adding defense attributes to a bug is actually very simple. Let's imagine that there is a bug. As a basic protection, its back is covered with a layer of carapace, so the most vulnerable part of its body is its tail. So the bug tries to curl its tail inwards and stuffs the huge tail into its stomach, which makes its body bigger and bigger, and begins to develop horizontally. Eventually, the carapace becomes wider and the tail is completely rolled into the body. Now it looks very much like a crab. This is probably a basic process of crabification. Generally speaking, crab-transformed creatures have almost no weaknesses, and the only way to defeat them is to rely on a powerful force that is enough to break their carapaces.

From this we can see that for insects, becoming a "crab" seems to be the end of the evolutionary path. No matter what evolutionary path they choose in the early stage, they will eventually reach the same destination.

So, how do we distinguish between real crabs and bugs that look like crabs? In fact, there are five main types of crabs: square crabs, swimming crabs, sand crabs, stream crabs, and fan crabs. As the name suggests, square crabs have a crab shell that is approximately square. The most familiar one among the square crabs is the hairy crab. We generally think that the hairy crab is a freshwater crab, but in fact it is not a simple freshwater crab. Every spawning season, the hairy crab will return to the sea to lay eggs, and then return to the lake. After hatching, the little crabs will also return to the land lake to live.

The swimming crab is the most commonly eaten sea crab. In addition to the swimming crab, there are also blue crabs and crabs in the superfamily of swimming crabs.

Sand crabs are also a very common type of crab. When we go to the beach, the small crabs that move quickly on the beach are sand crabs, and the crabs with one large and one small claws are also sand crabs. Creek crabs are the small crabs that we often see in creeks, and the main representative of fan crabs is the seven-star crab. Of course, in addition to these five main crabs, there are some real crabs, such as the weird-looking spider crabs and the bean crabs that parasitize shellfish. In addition to the above, the others are basically not crabs, but other "bugs" that have been transformed into crabs, such as king crabs, coconut crabs, hermit crabs, frog crabs, porcelain crabs, etc., which are just bugs under the name of crabs.

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